Wednesday

                        

                                    Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

BACK ON TRACK: Good news - the three humans circling our planet in low Earth orbit right now are on track to rendezvous with the International Space Station at 4:58 p.m. tomorrow, Seattle time. 

They were supposed to be on board the ISS by now, but a thruster malfunction yesterday shortly after launch prevented that. 

DISASTER: News of the horrific mud slide near Highway 530 north of Seattle continues to dominate the local and national news. In fact, it's even on the front page of NASA's Web site.

Here's a 'before' picture of the area (from Jan. 18 of this year) (via NASA).  What's interesting is here, you can see that even the 'before' is denuded/lacking vegetation compared to the areas to the north and south of it, along the river. There was a major landslide in the area in 2006. 

And here's the 'after' - a landslide so big it's visible from SPACE. The hillside has fallen into the river, creating quicksand, in effect, making rescue efforts darn near impossible. 

The latest landslide happened on March 22, across the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River.

The image above is from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite. (Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.)

Per a Seattle TImes report, retired US. Geological Survey geologist Daniel Miller warned the hillside had the “potential for a large catastrophic failure” in a report filed with U.S. Corp of Engineers in 1999. A shame the powers that be didn't listen to him. 

LANGUAGE ARTS: I had a rather gnarly dentist appointment this afternoon. I decided ahead of time to forgo the numbing and narcotics in place of a delicious microbrew at one of our favorite places, Chuck's afterward. It was a good call.

I met Christian and the kids there and we immediately launched into a heated game of Taboo!

CJ, especially, has come such a long way in the handful of times we've played it. He used to give ONE adjective for the key word and then just give you the stink eye, expecting you to guess it. Now, he comes at it from a number of angles with all sorts of words. Awesome!

To play, you have to give clues regarding the word at the top of the card, but you can't use any of the words on the lower part of the card. Sometimes easier said than done!

YANKEE DOODLE:  On Monday afternoon, we spied this bumpersticker on a car in front of us. It read, "Stand up for America!! Be an American!!"

I asked the kids what they thought it meant. CJ was quick to respond, "They're racist!"

I'm trying to think of something less, well harsh. But I can't. ... Anyone care to suggest a more sun-shiny suggestion as to this bumper sticker's intent?